Entertainment

Gut-wrenching video game explores the harsh reality of modern day poverty

The recently released independent video game Little Red Lie wants players to get real about their money problems.

And while the vision is bleak, it's an important one that couldn't have more relevance to those wading through the ever-increasing financial inequality that's eating away at our middle classes. The game interweaves the narratives of two characters that never meet, but experience opposite ends of the economic spectrum.

One of the protagonists, Sarah Stone, is a middle-aged office administrator living with her family under the looming threat of financial ruin. Meanwhile, you'll also play as Arthur Fox, who is the spitting image of a man on top of the world as a public character renowned for his wealth and charisma.

Creator Will O'Neill is no stranger to tackling heavy subjects. His previous game, the critically acclaimed Actual Sunlight, told the autobiographical story of his own struggle with depression.

Somehow, his new game presents an even starker and more difficult truth."It's an exploration of a rock-bottom social and political reality that you wake up in every day," said O'Neill in an online conversation. It's a reality, he believes, that we all have to summon the courage to face.

While Actual Sunlight was an introspective look at depression, Little Red Lie is about the larger systems perpetuating and heightening the feeling of hopelessness.

It highlights this modern day reality millennials face by contrasting it with the world baby boomers grew up in. Quite literally, it brings these issues home by following Sarah's experience as she faces the reality of living with her parents.

Little Red Lie

Image: will o'neill

As a millennial on the older side of the spectrum, both Will and Sarah are being forced to contend with the higher housing and living costs, stagnant wages, and insecure employment that leads to a work culture of part-time work or contract gigs.

"All she ever wanted to do was finish school, get a job, and climb the ladder she'd been told would be there her whole life," O'Neill said of the character.

But the world, she discovers, has changed. What she was taught about the world by her parents has become increasingly irrelevant.

"I wanted Little Red Lie to get into the guts of the impact that this [generational] division is having on a lot of people who grew up ostensibly middle class, and with the exact same aspirations," but who now seem to live in two totally different worlds.

Unlike other media that explores similar subjects, though, O'Neill wanted his game to tackle, "the unspoken reality of living in that world." A reality that, in his eyes, most millennials do their best to hide.

But statistics show that, more and more, they are becoming increasingly dependent on the financial support of their families. "Grown adults are still living with their parents," he said. "People's parents are paying for their unaffordable educations, the down payments on their first homes — providing them with the security they need to get married, have children."

To O'Neill, the affect this trend is having on his generation is dire.

"We're actually not growing up or doing alright at all," he said. "And — because we were raised to correlate independence with dignified adulthood — all of us carry a lot of shame about it. We lie to each other. We have terrible jobs, we make less and less money each year, but we still want to seem like 'normal people.' So we don't talk about the help that we take."

As a Torontonian, O'Neill was originally inspired by Canadian politics, with protagonist Arthur Fox echoing the likes of disgraced mayor Rob Ford. "But as the years went on and I continued to write, the specter of Donald Trump began to bleed a lot more heavily into him."

As a whole, Little Red Lie is a research-heavy, character-driven exploration of a system where "the richest and the worst among us increasingly seem to get away with basically everything." And the richer they get, the more others on the economic spectrum get vital lifelines ripped away from them.

Little Red Lie

Image: will o'neill

The game even personally implicates players in the story. In the beginning, it asks them a series of questions about their financial situation which greatly affect the branching narratives.

An admittedly nihilistic game, O'Neill hopes players walk away with an acceptance that, "it's probably already too late. And that even some kind of unforeseen technological miracle that brings us back from the brink of all ecological, economic and political chaos will only end up being owned by a bunch of assholes who will use it to grind us into dust and get even richer."

But O'Neill believes that we must face the fact that, no matter how much love you have, or how hard-working you are, there is no escaping reality.

"As adults, we have a responsibility to be able to contend with difficult ideas," he said. "Because if people are incapable of dealing with something like this, then everything truly is lost."

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